TEANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 643 



mistakes made by Nassau Senior — that it is isolated from the complex of social 

 phenomena — that it does violence to the ordinary use of language, and thus excites 

 distrust in the ordinary mind. This feeling is of importance, and justifies another 

 attempt to restate the theory of rent, to which end the statements given hitherto 

 must be classified. The Physiocrats may be omitted, as standing apart from our 

 purpose, and a cyclic tendency in the teaching of some of our leading modern 

 economists will enable the classification of ' post-physiocratic ' rent theories to be 



on an historical fundament U7n divisionis, and four periods will be yielded: 1. 



Adam Smith ; 2." Anderson, West, Malthus, and Ricardo ; 3. John Stuart Mill, 

 whose statement may be taken as the completed Ricardian phase of the question : 

 4. Thorold Rogers and Bonamy Price. From the teaching of this fourth period as 

 a starting-point, the journey is very short to what it is hoped may tend to a com- 

 pletion of rent-theory — rent explained by reference to the Law of Equal Inducement 

 to all employments. This law has a simple diagrammatic representation. Sundry 

 anomalous payments may thus be brought under rent. 



4. Oil Artisan Education. 

 Bij Professor Silyanus P. Thompson, B.A., D.Sc. 

 The author referred to his paper on ' Apprenticeship Schools in France,' read iu 

 this Section in 1879, as giving information and statistics on the manual elementary 

 schools, the factory schools, and the apprenticeship schools of France, which the recent 

 preliminary report of the Royal Commission on Technical Education has described. 

 The author claimed that no single new fact had been brought out by the report of 

 the Commissioners, beyond the information that by a recent law it had been decreed 

 that the education in such scliools, as in all primary schools in France, should be 

 gratuitous, and that manual training was now added to thirty primary schools in 

 Paris. Reference was made to these manual schools as constituting' a very im- 

 portant extension of the Kindergarten system of teaching. The author advocated 

 the introduction of manual training into primary schools ; the making of primary 

 education gratuitous ; and the necessity of making the experiment of^establishino- 

 such schools in the smaller towns as well as in larger centres of industry. 



TUESDAY, AUGUST 29. 



The following Papers were read : — 



1. Bailways — a Plea for Unity of Administration. 

 By Edward J. Watherston. 



The author stated that the British railway system had lately been considered 

 by a Select Committee of the House of Commons, and already there was a demand 

 for a new trial, on the ground that the verdict was against the evidence. Certain 

 it was thatthe report of the Select Committee could not be accepted as a settle- 

 ment of so important a question, so weak were the conclusions at which they had 

 arrived. To science tlie nation was indebted for the principle of steam-propelled 

 trains, and now to science they must look for the administration of those under- 

 takings._ He summarised the complaints of the public and the replies of the 

 companies. The Committee simply recommended that chambers of commerce and 

 of agriculture should liave a locus sfcmdiheiove the Railway Commission ; a uniform 

 classification of goods ; the recognition of terminal charges ; additional powers to 

 the Railway Commission ; the abandonment of canal control by railway companies; 

 and, lastly, the amalgamation of the railways of Ireland by direct Parliamentary 

 action. Sucli recommendations, if acted upon, would only make confusion woife 

 confounded. If unity of administration were desirable in the case of Ireland, it 

 was still more desirable in the case of Great Britain. Looked at superficially, the 

 number of 023,000,000 passengers carried in one year might seem large, but it was 



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